A whole drug is normally used for the production of camomile extracts. This consists of dried flowering heads including the attached stalk remains. The flowering heads consist of flower bases with enveloping calyx, 12 to 20 tongue-(ray-)florets and numerous tubular florets. The proportion of tongue florets in the whole drug is about 5 to 6%, the proportion of tubular florets 67 to 69%, and the rest is made up of flower bases with enveloping calyx and flower stalk.
Depending on the state of maturity of the flowering heads during harvesting, the nature of drying, processing, packaging, and storing of the drug, part of the whole drug disintegrates into its components parts, whereby camomile fragments, which consist essentially of tubular florets, and wing petals which consist mainly of tongue florets, are produced. These wing petals and camomile fragments are generally separated off during the recovery of the drug.
The camomile fragments and the wing petals are used in admixture with camomile fine-cut (that is, chopped camomile foliage) as a filling for tea bags. Camomile fragments are also used for the recovery of seed.
For the production of camomile extracts, the camomile whole drug, substantially freed from the fragments and wing petals, is normally used. However, the important flavone apigenin and the glycosides thereof are no longer present or are present only in small quantities in such a whole drug since these components mainly occur in the wing petals. Owing to the distinct musculotropic spasmolytic effect of apigenin and the equally spasmolytically effective apigenin glycosides, extracts with a high conent of these flavones are of therapeutic interest.
Since these wing petals have a substantially smaller content of volatile oil than the tubular florets or the intact flowering heads, they have so far not been used for the extraction of camomile with the purose of producing camomile extracts.